Wiki Whacked

Andrew Fowler - who first reported on WikiLeaks and its Australian founder Julian Assange for Foreign Correspondent last year and went on to write a definitive account of the cyber-phenomenon - The Most Dangerous Man in the World - goes in search again of the truth behind WikiLeaks’ dramatic, chaotic descent into dysfunction, perhaps even collapse.

He’s tracked down key figures in the launch and spectacular flight of WikiLeaks and the ascendency of Julian Assange and found shattered relationships, bitter feuds and the future of the website under a very dark cloud.

Holed up in his Norfolk bolthole awaiting the result of his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he's accused of sex crimes, Assange denies the whistleblower website he founded is in crisis.

“There is no problem in the hundreds of relationships that this organisation has signed partnerships with, on every continent except Antarctica. None of those have failed. They are all strong.” Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

But the evidence of former friends and partners tells otherwise. Such as former WikiLeaks deputy, Daniel Domscheit-Berg who walked out with hundreds of thousands of leaked documents, and has now set up his own rival organisation.

“He threatened me that he would hunt me down and kill me if I ever f****d up, and the f*****g up part was related to endangering any of our sources.”Daniel Domscheit-Berg, WikiLeaks former deputy

And prominent Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir - formerly one of Assange’s biggest supporters also accuses Assange of harassment and abuse. The human rights campaigner worked with him on the release of Collateral Murder the video that established WikiLeaks as a bold, crusading and potent new media force.

“It actually did feel a bit abusive to work in this environment where people were objectified, and only thought kindly of if they were useful.”Birgitta Jonsdottir, Icelandic MP and ex WikiLeaks collaborator

Assange still has his supporters, including prominent lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC and journalist and filmmaker Iain Overton, who watched from close quarters as Julian Assange fought with old media forces like The Guardian and The New York Times.

“If he is sent (to Sweden and to jail) I think WikiLeaks will limp on for a while. I doubt they are going to get any major new revelations given to them and it will probably just be in a holding pattern until such time as Julian is released from prison.”Iain Overton, Bureau of Investigative Journalism_____________________________________

Further Information

Julian Assange Extradition

A ruling by the High Court in London has paved the way for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations that he sexually molested two women.

Almost certainly Assange will seek leave to appeal against the decision but his Australian barrister Geoffrey Robertson told ABC TV’s Lateline that he “may be patting reindeers by Christmas.”

Foreign Correspondent has explored the plight of Wikileaks, its founder and the implications of the court proceedings.Here’s reporter Andrew Fowler with some fascinating additional material …

_____________________________________

Transcript

FOWLER: It’s a two-hour train trip northeast of London, through rolling green pastures to the English country town of Beccles. This quiet little community doesn’t toss up a lot of news. The locals still talk of media megastar Sir David Frost who moved here as a boy more than half a century ago, but now Beccles is in the spotlight thanks to a blow in from down under by the name of Julian Assange.

When we arrived he was completing for him the mundane daily task of signing in at the local police station.

“How many days is this Julian?”

JULIAN ASSANGE: “Two hundred… a hundred and sixty eight yeah”.

FOWLER: The man synonymous with the explosive website WikiLeaks now cuts a remote, forlorn figure as he heads back to a supporter’s country mansion where he waits as the wheels of justice turn slowly in his sex crimes case. Julian Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden where he’s accused of molesting two women.

JULIAN ASSANGE: [WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief] “I felt that I was basically turning into Howard Hughes. That I had a very small circle of people here, a long way away from London in rural England and that those few people could be trusted”.

FOWLER: If Assange and his legal team fail and the man dubbed ‘the most dangerous man in the world’ is surrendered to Sweden, gaol time there could be the least of his worries.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: [Defence Lawyer] “Once Julian is in custody in Sweden to face domestic prosecution under Swedish law, there is a provision in the US Sweden treaty which allows for a defendant either facing prosecution or someone who has been prosecuted and is serving a sentence to be lent to the US for prosecution”.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON QC: [Defence Barrister] “Sweden has been guilty of extraditing a number of individuals by in fact handing them over without proper process to the CIA and they’ve been tortured down the line and there have been findings against Sweden in human rights courts and of course extradition is partly a political decision and with an extremely right wing Swedish Government that owes a lot to America, you have a situation where he’d be more vulnerable than if, for example, he were returned to his own country, namely Australia”.

FOWLER: It seems like only yesterday that we first reported on the organisation threatening to change the future of information and journalism. WikiLeaks was pumping out secret after big secret and the people behind it forecast a new global transparency. As a people’s intelligence agency, it opened the door on a hidden world. An electronic drop box for whistle blowers whose identities would remain secret and their secrets made public.

From number 10 Downing Street to the defence department, to MI5, corrupt governments in Africa and multi nationals dumping toxic chemicals in third world countries – all were fair game. So too were some of the most secretive and sensitive corners of government in the United States and the reaction there was intense. Some very powerful figures want Assange dead. Prominent conservative Sarah Palin demanded he be hunted down like the Taliban. Other political heavy weights joined the chorus.

NEWT GINGRICH: Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism which leads to people getting killed is terrorism and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.

US SENATOR MITCH McCONNELL: He’s done enormous damage to our country. I think the man is a hi-tech terrorist.

JOSEPH BIDEN (US Vice President): I would argue that it’s closer to being a hi-tech terrorist.

ASSANGE: “It’s a pretty big deal right if Joseph Biden says you’re a hi-tech terrorist and Sarah Palin says that you should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden etcetera and others say that you should be garrotted in your hotel room and a car bomb would take care of the issue and so on and the threats against even my children, but what you do is you just take appropriate precautions”.

IAIN OVERTON: [Bureau of Investigative Journalism] “I think if he’s extradited the likelihood he’ll be sent down is pretty great because I think there’s huge amount of political and international pressure on the judiciary to find against you and then Swedish laws are pretty harsh when it comes to what he’s been accused of, and if he is sent down, I think WikiLeaks will limp on for a while. I doubt they’re going to get any major new revelations given to them and it will probably just be in a holding pattern until such time as Julian is released from prison”.

FOWLER: The Julian Assange we profiled a year or so ago is isolated and without many of his closest most trusted allies and his truth machine, WikiLeaks, has serious problems. We’ve tracked down key figures in the launch and spectacular flight of WikiLeaks and the ascendancy of Julian Assange and we found broken relationships, bitter feuds and the future of the website under a very dark cloud.

ASSANGE: “There is no problem in hundreds of relationships that this organisation has - signed partnerships with media organisations on every continent except Antarctica. None of those have failed. They are all strong, they have all produced tremendous work”.

FOWLER: “How close a relationship did you have with him?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “Do you mean if we kissed or something like that? We were just friends, but I mothered him. I washed his clothes”.

FOWLER: Birgitta Jonsdottir is an Icelandic MP, a campaigner for human rights and open government. She was one of Assange’s closest friends. Now it’s over. Things got heated when she advised him to stand aside as the WikiLeaks spokesperson while the sexual molestation allegations played out.

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: [MP, Iceland] “Yeah it was just one of these times when you sort of felt that maybe I should have shut up because there was a lot of anger you know? “

FOWLER: “Like what?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “Well you know what sort of started to happen throughout this entire process was that there were many threats. It actually did feel a bit you know abusive to work in this environment where people were objectified and only thought kindly of if they were useful”.

FOWLER: “In what way was he abusive towards you?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “Just you know by threatening you, you know?”

FOWLER: “In what way?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “I can’t go into details about that”.

FOWLER: “Why not?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: (shakes head)

FOWLER: Jonsdottir and Assange once had grand plans to make Iceland a media haven for free speech. Now they don’t even speak.

ASSANGE: “Anyone can say whatever they like but Birgitta Jonsdottir’s - although she did valuable work and I would never detract from the valuable work that she did - what she thinks is actually not relevant to the organisation, having been excluded from the organisation she had certain animosity towards it and towards me.”

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “Julian is a very brilliant person, he’s very intelligent and on the other hand I think he lacks some social competence”.

FOWLER: Once a part of an unbreakable WikiLeaks double act, Daniel Domscheit-Berg played the computer nerd, Julian Assange the charismatic leader. But here again the close relationship has turned noxious. For Assange it foundered on trust.

ASSANGE: “He’d been excluded from all source material. It was viewed that he was not trustworthy. We had concerns about his stability back in January 2010 and as a result he was phased out of the high security part of what we were doing”.

FOWLER: Domscheit-Berg believes Assange, the cyber warrior, developed an over–inflated ego from the glut of global attention and then he turned on his own.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: [Former WikiLeaks Deputy] “He threatened me that he would hunt me down and kill me if I ever f****d up and the f****ing up part was related to endangering any of our sources and actually that statement came completely out of the blue because there was no mistake that had happened at that point in time. He became very paranoid about the way he was dealing with me, dealing with others as well. It was all about conspiracies, back-stabbing, alleged backstabbing, alleged conspiracies and that’s just tiresome if you want to work together”.

FOWLER: Now in Berlin building his own whistle blower site, Domscheit-Berg has someone WikiLeaks and Assange badly need. The brains behind the intricate and protective WikiLeaks anonymous drop box. He’s one of the few in this very public saga who’s kept a lid on his identity. In the Wiki fraternity he is simply called ‘the Architect’.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “It’s all his creation. Not a single line of code ever was made by Julian. He has no role in creating the submission system and neither have I and neither did I or he ever have access to that system and that person who created it decided to not provide such a powerful tool to WikiLeaks anymore and he decided to take it away”.

FOWLER: “What can you tell us about the Architect?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “Nothing”.

FOWLER: “Why is that?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “He wants to remain anonymous so I have nothing to say about him”.

FOWLER: “But how can someone remain anonymous in such a transparent area?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “If you want to protect the people that want to be only working on the content not the politics, you should absolutely honour that”.

FOWLER: “How important is the role of the architect?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “It’s very”.

FOWLER: “In what way?”

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: “He’s a genius”. He’s a genius and you know writing the stuff that you need to write, the coding, the encryptions to make sure that people can leak documents without being tracked”.

FOWLER: The super security of the Wiki website designed and delivered by the Architect drew an avalanche of super sensitive material. But after dalliances with self publication, Assange’s strategy shifted into alliances with some of the world’s biggest and most respected newspapers. It would not be long before these relationships would also disintegrate.

The Guardian is a bastion of British journalism, along with The New York Times, Le Monde and Spain’s El Pais it’s published sensational stories courtesy of classified information provided by WikiLeaks. Julian Assange’s relationship with The New York Times has been difficult for several months now, but his relationship with The Guardian has turned toxic.

WikiLeaks and The Guardian had collaborated on a number of big releases and they were invariably fraught with shifting terms and conditions, but it was a treasure trove of documents dubbed “Cablegate” a cache of 251,000 classified State Department files that would bring the biggest arguments, accusations and recriminations.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER: [Editor, The Guardian] “Things were getting tense between us because Julian at this point was semi-detached. It was, communication was very difficult because I think he felt more and more paranoid about his own personal position after the accusations in Sweden so it wasn’t a sort of simple matter of just lifting the phone and speaking to him, you had to go through encrypted technologies”.

FOWLER: Assange wasn’t simply worried about how The Guardian communicated with him, he was deeply concerned about how the paper’s computers were vulnerable to hackers.

ASSANGE: “They put all the cables onto internet connected computer systems, completely breaching their security, opening them up to foreign intelligence agencies and computer hackers. The first thing we would have known is when our people in the United States would have been rounded up and arrested”.

FOWLER: The Cablegate files spilled the beans on everything from the State Department spying on the United Nations, to calls by Saudi Arabia for the US to bomb Iran. It was hot stuff and certainly one of WikiLeaks biggest scoops, but Assange accused The Guardian of double dealing.

ASSANGE: “They secretly gave all the cables to the New York Times behind our backs. They secretly set up the program to publish them without telling us”.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER: “We had a sort of crisis meeting or a clear the air meeting where Julian suddenly barged into this building unannounced with lawyers and he got very angry with us ‘cause he accused us of dealing with the New York Times where he didn’t want to and the reason he didn’t want to deal with the New York Times was because the New York Times had published an unflattering piece about him. So it was all getting very messy and we had a meeting that went on for about 8 hours. There was lots of jabbing of fingers and shouting and accusations”.

FOWLER: It wasn’t just the so-called hit piece that upset Assange, he was angry that the New York Times failed to carry some of the reports on America’s illicit activities.

ASSANGE: “The New York Times had been censoring its material, attacking an alleged source and attacking us as an organisation for its own strategic purposes”.

FOWLER: WikiLeaks alliance with the old media was on the rocks but the fallout from Cablegate wouldn’t end there. More damage was on the way, courtesy of a WikiLeaks underling by the name of Herbert Snorrason. Wide-eyed and enthusiastic when he joined, Snorrason soon found himself in the bitter cross-fire between Assange and Domscheit-Berg.

HERBERT SNORRASON: [Former WikiLeaks volunteer] “The most specific disagreement I had with Julian was that he alleged that Daniel acted maliciously and that Daniel was after Julian’s job. I requested evidence because I was sceptical of the claim”.

FOWLER: “Can you tell me the language that he used when he spoke to you?”

HERBERT SNORRASON: “Ah (laughs) yeah there is a quote that circulated quite widely, ‘I am the heart and soul of this organisation - its founder, philosopher, original coder’. I really don’t remember the entire list..... and ending with ‘if you have a problem with me you can piss off’.”

ASSANGE: “I think I told him very soundly to piss off. You know we were trying to get on with things and it wasn’t useful to have an Icelandic student hectoring the CEO of an organisation during a time of high stress”.

HERBERT SNORRASON: “My immediate reply was so be it. I left and I have not spoken with Julian since”.

FOWLER: It might have paid Assange to treat Snorrason better. On a flight home to Iceland, he read a book written by two Guardian reporters Assange had teamed up, with to produce the Cablegate stories. Incredibly there in black and white they’d printed a password, confidentially given to them by Assange to open the encrypted Cablegate files. The files had been placed on the internet for safe keeping in case anything happened to Assange.

FOWLER: Snorrason drove to his grandparents’ home close to Reykjavik Airport. If the password opened the cables, all the names of US informants would be revealed. Snorrason fired up his computer and carefully typed in the code. Seconds later the Cablegate internet file opened up.

HERBERT SNORRASON: “I immediately realised that this would be something that was very dangerous. My main concern was that the release of those documents could put people’s lives at risk”.

FOWLER: Snorrason contacted his friend Domscheit-Berg in Germany to tell him what he’d found.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “Sharing the password for the master copy was I think a big mistake and there’s not really any excuse for that other than being lazy”.

FOWLER: Not far from central Berlin, Der Freitag, a radical newspaper with a tiny circulation, splashed the story. We can now reveal the principle source was none other than Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

“What do you say to the argument that by talking to Freitag, by pointing them in the direction of the file and the password, the key, that you made it likely that that information would be available, unredacted around the world?”

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “It’s just a matter of time until somebody intelligent would have put one and one together and anyone putting in resources into finding these cables because they had an interest in obtaining access to the cables was probably, has known that for quite some time already”.

FOWLER: “But you helped speed it up”.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “No I don’t.... well I don’t know. You could..... you could allege that I did. I don’t know if I did”.

FOWLER: That the code printed in the Guardian book was a grave error of judgement by the authors mattered not a jot. WikiLeaks looked as if its security was slack. For Daniel Domscheit-Berg it vindicated his stand against WikiLeaks.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG: “It is important for the world to understand the general issue at hand because people are potentially risking their lives trusting in the ability to handle information properly. We were not just making this up in order to find an excuse for sabotaging WikiLeaks or for spreading dirt you know?”

ASSANGE: “I assume it was probably not malicious the putting of the password in the book, it was just extremely arrogant and careless. Where there may be genuine criticism levelled at me and the decision making of the organisation, is that actually we trusted The Guardian”.

FOWLER: With the names of spies and informants revealed, Assange decided to publish the full cables on the WikiLeaks website arguing that everyone should have access and not those simply in the know, such as corrupt dictatorships and their intelligence organisations.

ASSANGE: “Given that the material had already been published, at that stage we determined that well actually we have to give this to the public, we have to give this to the journalists, we have to give this to human rights workers”.

FOWLER: WikiLeaks polarises opinion. It’s either a force for good or a dangerous enemy of the state. Whatever the case, with the Architect gone, it’s now effectively closed for new business, unable to take whistle blowers’ electronic submissions.

“When will it be on line again?”

ASSANGE: “Some time… I don’t know”.

FOWLER: “When will you be open to take submissions again, electronic submissions?”

ASSANGE: “I’m not sure…”.

FOWLER: “Will it be one month, two months, six months?”

ASSANGE: “I imagine before the end of the year”.

FOWLER: But right now Assange has other more important concerns. Here at the High Court in London the ruling on his extradition to Sweden is imminent. At the same time a US Grand Jury is investigating if there’s sufficient evidence to indict him on charges of spying against the United States.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: “Under the US Espionage Act there are sections that do carry the death penalty. For that reason I suspect he wouldn’t be extradited on those charges but there are lesser charges that carry up to ten years imprisonment and that is what he would face, ten years in a maximum security prison”.

FOWLER: No matter what the outcome in the United States, Julian Assange can expect little help from Australia.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: “We had the Australian Prime Minister come out and accuse him of illegal conduct which was manifestly untrue and was proven as such by an Australian Federal Police investigation in Australia, so her comments were both prejudicial and premature. We also had the Attorney General, Robert McClelland suggesting that they may cancel Julian’s passport. Now as an Australian living abroad myself, I found that to be a shocking statement to come from our Government, that the Australian Government would be so quick to accuse rather than protect an Australian living abroad and I think that’s of grave concern and one that the Australian public ought to take up with our politicians”.

ASSANGE: “Well the Prime Minister and the Attorney General are US lackeys. I mean it’s as simple as that”.

IAIN OVERTON: “I really admire the man. I mean he’s getting a huge amount of flack from all sides but he’s actually by releasing all this information, he’s created a complete hellhole for his life. He didn’t have to do it and yet what he’s done is just remarkable”.

FOWLER: Julian Assange set out to challenge the media and government secrecy. WikiLeaks has given a penetrating insight into the covert world of war and politics. Now he and his organisation face their severest test, the struggle for survival.

Sort by:

relevance or date

Other Video Formats

Recent Stories

More Stories by Andrew Fowler

Bird flu is already aggressively lethal so why did laboratory researchers engineer a super strain that can be contracted far more easily, just like normal flu? It’s a question that has provoked raging arguments within the scientific community and provoked an extraordinary reaction from security agencies worried about the prospect of bio-terrorism. At the moment there’s a tense truce between the camps but inevitably the research projects will publish their work. Some experts also believe it’s only a matter of time before the bug itself leaves the lab and goes to work on a very unprepared world. More

Travellers' Tales from Andrew Fowler

A decision by South African prosecutors to drop corruption charges against African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma has divided the country. Andrew Fowler from the ABC's investigative unit looks into the case. More